Friday, 25 September 2009

Update all AutoCAD Architecture/MEP Palettes in a click

AutoCAD Architecture (ACA) and MEP use Tool Palettes - like AutoCAD - but have the Content Browser to organise and share them. While the system has it’s quirks I’ve found it a brilliant way to share content, tools, and custom commands/process/tasks and it’s something I miss in Revit. Best of all it’s not CUI based and version independent so Tool Palettes/Tools/Groups created in ADT 2004 work fine in ACA 2010.

Manual, or Automatic?

You can have Tool Palettes update automatically when the application starts but if you have lots of tools it tends to slow things down. There is also little point as, once established, their content doesn’t change much as you can update/version object styles without re-creating their tools.

The other option is a manual update which can be forced by clicking the Refresh Icon on each Palette. You can refresh a Palette Set (group of palettes) from the Tool Palettes - Title Right Click Menu. Even that gets a bit tedious if you have lots of palette groups, especially as some can take a while to refresh.

The one click refresh

What wasn’t obvious, to me at least, is that in addition to the Palette Groups you create “All Palettes” is a Palette Set. For some reason I thought “Sets” referred to the groups (on the right side of the customise dialog) but no! You can switch to “All Palettes”, Right Click > Refresh Palette Set and update every palette with a click and, if you have hundreds tools like us, a quick coffee!

Comments

AutoCAD Architecture (ACA) and MEP use Tool Palettes - like AutoCAD - but have the Content Browser to organise and share them. While the system has it’s quirks I’ve found it a brilliant way to share content, tools, and custom commands/process/tasks and it’s something I miss in Revit. Best of all it’s not CUI based and version independent so Tool Palettes/Tools/Groups created in ADT 2004 work fine in ACA 2010.

Manual, or Automatic?

You can have Tool Palettes update automatically when the application starts but if you have lots of tools it tends to slow things down. There is also little point as, once established, their content doesn’t change much as you can update/version object styles without re-creating their tools.

The other option is a manual update which can be forced by clicking the Refresh Icon on each Palette. You can refresh a Palette Set (group of palettes) from the Tool Palettes - Title Right Click Menu. Even that gets a bit tedious if you have lots of palette groups, especially as some can take a while to refresh.

The one click refresh

What wasn’t obvious, to me at least, is that in addition to the Palette Groups you create “All Palettes” is a Palette Set. For some reason I thought “Sets” referred to the groups (on the right side of the customise dialog) but no! You can switch to “All Palettes”, Right Click > Refresh Palette Set and update every palette with a click and, if you have hundreds tools like us, a quick coffee!